Nokia Lumia 830 Review

Following September's launch, the Lumia 830 has now been given an on-sale date. The new phone will be available from October 3 from EE, Vodafone, Tesco, Amazon and Carphone Warehouse on contracts from £25 per month.

The 5in Lumia 830 is tagged Nokia's "first affordable flagship" and is kitted out with a quad-core Qualcomm SoC and the Lumia Denim update, which includes Cortana, Microsoft's much-heralded rival to iOS's Siri.

Nokia Lumia 830 review: design

The Lumia 830 sits just below the 930 in the Lumia range, and we were immediately struck by the physical resemblance of the two units.

It shares the 930's exposed aluminium edges and colourful matte-plastic back-panel. However, while the 930's back panel curved towards sheer edges, the 830 has a much softer design, with the edges curving all the way around to the 5in, 720 x 1,280 screen. This gives the 830 a less severe look than its stablemate and makes it a little more comfortable to hold in one hand.

There are also shades of the Nokia Lumia 1020's design. Like the 1020, the 830's 10-megapixel rear camera is surrounded by a black circular lens housing, which breaks up the back panel's expanse of colourful plastic. Whereas the 1020's lens housing popped out from the back panel, the 830's lies flat and doesn't add to the phone's overall bulk.

Overall we're pleased with how the 830 looks and feels, and actually prefer it to the 930, despite the fact that it's lower in the range.

Nokia Lumia 830 review: specifications and features

The 830 is equipped with the now ageing Snapdragon 400 SoC, running at 1.2GHz and supported by 1GB RAM. It isn't an array that will set the world on fire, but for a mid-range 5in smartphone, it will be fast enough. Storage is plentiful, with 16GB as standard, 15GB OneDrive cloud storage and a microSD card slot that allows you to add up to 128GB.

The Lumia Denim update comes preloaded on the 830, too, adding several new features and ushering in the newest batch of Windows Phone 8.1 updates, including the Siri-like Cortana personal assistant.

Camera

Most notably, the Camera app has been upgraded, adding some nifty new enhancement features to the 10-megapixel camera's UI. These include improved shooting speed, a "Moment Capture" mode (which captures 4K quality video recordings at 24fps), and a "Rich Capture" mode, which snaps a flash and non-flash photo concurrently, allowing you to adjust the amount of light in a photo after taking it.

Release and Price

Nokia gave no firm release date, only saying the Lumia 830 would arrive by "early October" along with the 730 and 735. UK pricing isn't available yet, but the 830 will start at €330 exc VAT.